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Microsoft, Researchers Developing Multimodal AI for Radiology
Medical imaging stands to be a major beneficiary of today's wave of research around healthcare-optimized AI models.
Case in point: Microsoft is partnering with researchers at Mass General Brigham and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health to develop multimodal AI technologies that can help radiologists analyze, interpret and report on medical images more efficiently.
"[O]ur joint efforts aim to leverage the power of imaging foundation models to improve experiences and workflow efficiency across the radiology ecosystem in a way that is reliable, transparent and secure," said Peter Durlach, corporate vice president of Microsoft Health and LifeSciences, in a prepared statement. "Together, we are not only advancing medical imaging, but also helping deliver more accessible and better-quality patient care in a very resource-constrained environment."
The researchers and Microsoft plan to jointly develop multimodal AI foundation models that can be used to build applications that can slot into radiologists' workflows, potentially reducing burnout, alleviating the effects of staffing shortages and reducing long patient wait times -- all of which are endemic in medical settings.
Such apps can also help with drug discovery, structured data analysis and disease classification.
The key, they said, is to create "multimodal data-enriched medical imaging foundation models." Multimodal models are generative AI models that can ingest and generate information in multiple formats, including text, images, video and audio. This versatility makes them useful for a wider range of tasks than so-called "unimodal" AI models. They are also better able to contextualize data that they are fed, and in turn generate outputs that are more nuanced.
The researchers aim to deploy successful models on, among other platforms, Microsoft's Azure AI Service and the Nuance family of AI-powered medical documentation solutions. (Microsoft acquired Nuance in 2022 for $19 billion.)
"We are excited to collaborate with Microsoft on the development, validation and thoughtful clinical investigation of generative AI in the medical imaging space," said Scott Reeder, chair of the Department of Radiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. "Our focus is to bridge the gap within medical imaging from innovation to patient care in ways that improve outcomes and make innovative care more accessible."